Hannah Kobayashi Declared ‘Voluntary Missing Person’ After Crossing Mexico Border by Foot, Police Say

Hannah Kobayashi, the 30-year-old Hawaii woman who disappeared after failing to board a flight in Los Angeles and sending what were described as “alarming” text messages to her family — sparking a police investigation — has been determined to be a “voluntary missing person.”

“As the family is aware, late yesterday after traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border, we reviewed video surveillance from U.S. Customs and Border Protection which clearly shows Kobayashi crossing the United States border on foot into Mexico,” Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell told reporters on Monday, Dec. 2.

Kobayashi crossed the U.S.-Mexico border on Nov. 12 just after noon local time, McDonnell said. She was on foot and used the San Ysidro point of entry tunnel.

“She was alone, with her luggage and appeared unharmed,” McDonnell added.

The investigation found no evidence that Kobayashi “is being trafficked or is the victim of foul play,” he said. Police said there is no information that she’s working with anyone else.

The investigation will not continue in Mexico: “We urge Ms. Kobayashi to contact her family, law enforcement or personnel at the U.S. Embassy to let us know that you’re safe,” McDonnell said.

If Kobayashi returns to the U.S., law enforcement will be notified, he said.

“She has a right to her privacy and we respect her choices, but we also understand that the concern her loved ones feel for her,” McDonnell said. “A simple message could reassure those who care about her.”

Investigators also learned that before Kobayashi departed Maui in early November, she “expressed the desire to step away from modern connectivity,” McDonnell said, adding there was “no indication that there would be anything to cause this to happen” and that he was unsure of Kobayashi’s interpersonal dynamics.

Another officer, Douglas Oldfield, told reporters that authorities examined Kobayashi’s social media and saw “indications that there were some desires or posts that would be consistent in somebody who would” want to disconnect.

Kobayashi initially appeared to go missing in early November after saying she felt “scared” in text messages while staying in Los Angeles after missing a scheduled connecting flight to New York City that landed on Nov. 9, her family has said.

Kobayashi then spent a few days in L.A., according to her family.

“Hannah’s last message to us was alarming — she mentioned feeling scared and that someone might be trying to steal her money and identity,” her aunt Lori Pidgeon wrote on social media. “She hasn’t been heard from since and we are gravely concerned for her safety.”

The last place her phone pinged was at 4 p.m. local time on Nov. 11, at the L.A. airport.

Police now say she went to Mexico the following day.

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“Her phone pinged at LAX at 4 p.m. and then after that … her phone went dead and her communication cut off completely,” Pidgeon has said.

Kobayashi’s sister, Sydni, also said she received strange text messages from her sibling, as well.

Oldfield said on Dec. 2 that officials are “not able to interpret those communications without having Hannah present to explain how she felt when she sent them and what the specific meetings were for those messages.”

“She texted her that she was scared and that she couldn’t come back home or something,” Sydni told Hawaii News Now. “It was just really weird texts … it doesn’t sound like her, like there’s just something off about it.”

And in another text sent to a friend by Kobayashi after she failed to board her connecting flight, she wrote, “I got tricked pretty much into giving away all my funds for someone I thought I loved,” according to the outlet.

“This like the sister, mother, anyone’s worst nightmare of losing your child,” Kobayashi’s mom, Brandi Yee, told Fox affiliate KHON in Hawaii last month.

Amid the search for Hannah, her father, Ryan, was found dead in an L.A. parking lot on Nov. 24 after traveling to California to look for his daughter.

Ryan died by suicide from multiple blunt force traumatic injuries, according to the L.A. County medical examiner. He was 58.

“I’m very sorry to the family for all that they’ve been through this ordeal. We’re very sorry for their loss. And I don’t know the words can express the feelings that they’re going through during this very difficult time. But there’s a lot of people very much in support of what they’re going through,” McDonnell, the L.A. police chief, said on Dec. 2.

“He died of a broken heart,” Pidgeon, Ryan’s former sister-in-law and Hannah’s aunt, previously told PEOPLE.

“He wanted to do everything he could,” she said. “He showed up when it mattered the most.”